Guardian DeAngelis continues to watch over students

Commitment, guilt drive principal to continue watch over school and its students

Principal Frank DeAngelis, who's still at Columbine High School 10 years after the school shootings, connects with students during lunch, Monday, March 16, 2009. Shown are (left to right) Ian Van Senus, 17, Chealsey Golla, 17, Erik Storesund, 18, on the left side and to the right is Winston Harrell, 16. Judy DeHaas, The Denver Post (THE DENVER POST | JUDY DEHAAS)

Two suicidal students slaughtered a dozen classmates and a teacher in his building. Survivor's guilt wrung him out, lawsuits pointed fingers at him and critics slammed his school. For months, tour buses of morbid curiosity seekers lumbered past his office window.

So why did Frank DeAngelis stay?

Follow the principal of Columbine High School through the building, a decade after what was the worst school shooting in U.S. history. As DeAngelis, 54, moves upstream into the flow of students, many smile at him — "What's up, Mr. D?" — or silently exchange a fist bump. At lunch in the commons, his compact, energetic figure darts among the tables, laughing and chatting.

Watch him now, observing a freshman American government class, and notice how he can't resist the urge to jump into the lesson. He asks the teacher how much he usually offers kids for extra credit.

"Five points."

"I'll give you 10," DeAngelis says, turning to the students just before the bell. He poses a question about habeas corpus — and a student almost instantly parries with the correct answer.

DeAngelis breaks into a wide grin. You can't take the teacher out of the administrator, especially one who has been known to drop in on an English class, dressed in a preacher's robe, and spout fire and brimstone as he delivers Jonathan Edwards' classic sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

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"I could go back and teach," DeAngelis says almost wistfully as he steps back into the sudden din of the hallway.

"In a heartbeat."

Many levels of devotion, over many years

So here's the obvious answer: A lifelong educator's simple devotion to students binds DeAngelis to this place, the sprawling suburban high school with the tragically iconic name and 1,700 kids milling around its halls.

But the connection runs deeper.

By April 20, 1999, he had already forged a 20-year history at Columbine as a teacher, coach and administrator. And then suddenly, he stared down a hallway at a kid pointing a shotgun in his direction. DeAngelis thought he was about to die as shots echoed and glass shattered behind him.

He believes he lived because, at that moment, the gunman chose to pursue teacher Dave Sanders up an adjacent stairway and fire the shots that killed him. That, too, binds DeAngelis to this place.

"There's survivor's guilt on my part that I'll take to my grave," he says. "If Dave had not come up that staircase, would I even be here?"

DeAngelis never wavered in his commitment to remain as principal. In short order, he promised returning students that he would stick with them for the rest of their high school careers.

"I knew that the longer I waited, I might hesitate," he explains. "So I painted myself into a corner. I was afraid if I didn't make that commitment, I wouldn't be here."

Some in the community held him accountable for the tragedy, for failing to recognize and act on danger signs, and made their case to the school board. However, DeAngelis retained strong support from the district administration and his staff.

Jane Hammond, then-superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools, says she never considered removing DeAngelis from Columbine "when he seemed to be the most important person in holding it together."

"He started out with a good healthy dose of commitment," she adds. "The tragedy has deepened that. Now it's at a place where he can't picture it being out of his life."

Psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, a Michigan-based expert in post-traumatic stress disorder who worked with Columbine survivors for a year after the attack, initially felt that staying wasn't a good idea for DeAngelis or those who worked for him.

Ochberg noticed not only that DeAngelis was suffering himself, but that he wasn't much help to his assistant principals. Still, the example he set by staying made it difficult for other administrators to leave.

Now, with benefit of hindsight, Ochberg says DeAngelis' presence at Columbine ultimately proved positive for both students and the principal — though Ochberg is still fascinated by the principal's attachment to the site of the tragedy.

He offers a theory based on Stockholm syndrome, a condition Ochberg defined in the 1970s that generally describes hostages bonding with their captors as a psychological means of enduring violence.

"Is it possible to have Stockholm syndrome to a place — a place that killed your children, that overwhelmed you and overcame you, but also gave you a new lease on life?" Ochberg submits. "That dynamic is powerful."

DeAngelis sees strains of truth in that theory, though he also leans toward the more spiritual idea, reinforced by his priest and counselor, that there was a reason he was spared that day: His leadership was needed.

Some former students agree.

"All of us had this survivor's mentality," recalls Matt Varney, now 27 and living in Florida. "At that time, it was almost like we wanted to get back into school to prove that the tragedy would not define us. Frank was the figurehead of that."

"He's almost symbolic for how we recovered and how we are now," adds Brett O'Neill, the school's director of instrumental music — and one of five Columbine students that day who returned as teachers.

Cindy Stevenson, the current superintendent who was working under Hammond in 1999, recalls that DeAngelis could have had another assignment in the district.

"There was a lot of criticism of everybody, as there will be in a situation like this," Stevenson says. "If he'd left, the school would have been different. But it's hard to imagine that it would have been better."

Questions, criticism and lawsuits

Deciding to stay was just a prelude to the trials that awaited DeAngelis. The questions surfaced, slowly at first, then gathering momentum: How could this happen? How could two students plan and execute such carnage? What school culture could incubate such hatred?

For three years after the attack, DeAngelis weathered sharp criticism — and multiple lawsuits from families of the dead and injured — for not recognizing "red flags" concerning the eventual shooters and for permitting a school culture that fostered bullying.

Nearly all of the suits were dismissed in federal district court. Then, in 2002, the school district and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office reached a settlement with the families.

"Maybe it's not Frank's complete fault; maybe it's everybody's," says Connie Michalik, who brought one of the lawsuits on behalf of her injured son, Richard Castaldo. "Nobody did anything. That's haunted me for 10 years.

"If he's so hands-on, why did he not know what was going on? If he's going to try to make amends, maybe this is his way, to be more vigilant. I don't know the man well, but I've never gotten over blaming him. I probably always will."

At the time, criticism stung a principal suddenly under attack for failing at something he had considered a strength — connecting with students. He made a point of visiting classes regularly. He roamed about the commons at lunch. He attended countless student activities and awards ceremonies.

"You start reading about yourself, and people are saying you have blood on your hands," DeAngelis says. "You receive threats on your life. And it gets to the point where you ask, 'Are they right? Am I a bad person?' "

At that point, DeAngelis, who calls himself a "cradle Catholic," found strength in his faith that helped him move forward. Since then, he has sought to eliminate his blind spots.

"It was a wake-up call for me after the tragedy," he says. "I was thinking all's well at Columbine, but some kids didn't feel welcome. I had to make an effort to connect with those kids. It's difficult as an administrator to figure out what they're thinking. There are kids who get lost out there in a school of our size."

The tragedy also took a toll on DeAngelis' personal life. His 18-year marriage ended. He calls Columbine his "second family," yet he struggled to communicate with his own.

He would eventually understand why his daughter, then a junior at ThunderRidge High School, wondered where her father had gone.

"She sees me relate to all these (Columbine) kids and she's saying, 'What about me?' " DeAngelis recalls. "I didn't realize at the time. But you look back, 10 years later, and wonder: Did I do what I could have?"

DeAngelis and his now-adult daughter are, he says, as close as they've ever been. He's engaged to his high-school sweetheart. Still, Columbine remains a constant in his life — so much so that colleagues and former students chuckle at the way he periodically commits himself to another few years, and another, and another.

Now he hopes to stay until every child who was in a Columbine-area elementary school on that day in 1999 graduates.

That would take him through 2012.

"By then, the graduates will have had kids in kindergarten and he'll have to stay on further," says Kevin Land, a former assistant principal under DeAngelis. "I have a hard time seeing Frank working somewhere else."

"I remember Columbine . . ."

Like so many Columbine survivors, DeAngelis has had to contend with circumstances that trigger anxiety. Some are utterly unique, like opening an e-mail that begins, "In a few hours you will probably hear about a school shooting in North Carolina. I am responsible for it. I remember Columbine . . ."

(After killing his father, that 19-year-old man was arrested when he fired shots outside his high school, injuring two.)

Others are more mundane: Driving west on Hampden Avenue reminds him of the unassuming start of that day, when he attended an early-morning student recognition breakfast at the Wellshire Inn. The sound of a balloon popping can bring tears. The starter's pistol at a swim meet can elicit beads of cold sweat.

As the 10th observance of the tragedy approaches, he finds himself predictably distracted, sometimes dangerously so. In years past, he has absently bumped fenders with other cars. This year, he rolled through a red light and nearly got T-boned by another vehicle.

"Over the years, I've learned when I'm in trouble and need to talk to my counselor," he says. "That's where I am now. I go in for maintenance."

He attends to ritual. There's the 5 a.m. visit to a nearby gym most days for an hour of cardiovascular exercise or weights. It's a regimen that helps mind and body stand up to the rigors of overseeing a school whose name, for better and for worse — and quite possibly forever — occupies a tragic place in American culture.

But most days simply come and go in a building alive with activity, with all the sights and sounds that define normal in almost any other high school, with kids who barely remember that horrible day, if they remember it at all.

Certainly Frank DeAngelis has looked back, anxiously and often. But he prefers another direction.

"In my mind, I'm looking at 2013," he says, mulling retirement — and instantly giving himself an out. "But who knows? I can count on one hand the number of days I felt like I couldn't wait for the day to be over.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.